Press Announcements

S.P. Vijayakumar, a postdoctoral scientist in biology, led a team of researchers on an expedition to isolated hills in Southern India where they discovered a new, ancient lineage of frogs. With a group of scientists that included R. Alexander Pyron, the Robert F. Griggs Associate Professor of Biology, Vijayakumar located the new species—Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, or the “Starry Dwarf Frog”—on a forest floor within the remote Western Ghats mountain range. The discovery could solve evolutionary questions in one of the world’s major biodiversity hotspots.

Professor of Astrophysics Chryssa Kouveliotou and an international team of researchers provided new insights into Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, and their relations to supernova. GRB explosions are so massive that they should always produce visible supernovae. But some supernova do not have associated GRBs. The global research group observed a hot cocoon around the jets of matter that serves as the missing link connecting supernovae and GRBs.